Non-quarantine travel could be on offer

Listen to this article:

Fiji Airways planes at Nadi International Airport. Picture: REINAL CHAND/FILE

Non-quarantine travel could be offered to foreign visitors travelling through Fiji Airways once international borders reopen.

Airline managing director and CEO Andre Viljoen explained this was one of their recommendations under the draft Travel Framework submitted to Government.

“In the framework we suggested that countries will be graded as a green zone country or a red zone country using a traffic light system,” he said during an interview with this newspaper.

“If they are green, their country will be at least 60 per cent fully vaccinated, no more than 5 per cent of the population at any one time is positive with COVID and they have no new variant of COVID.

“With travellers coming from that green zone country, they will arrive in Fiji fully vaccinated, with a 72 hour PCR test result, have a rapid test at the airport or when they get to their hotel and then they are free to roam and have their holiday with no quarantining.

“That is what we suggested because our view is if there is still quarantining as a requirement people isn’t going to want to come for holiday.

“You can’t quarantine and holiday. It’s really restrictive.

“The less restrictive the better but we are always conscious that we are protecting everyone.”

He said those from red zone countries would undergo quarantine.

“If it’s a red zone country, then people from those countries will not travel or mix with the people from the green zone neither on the flight nor at the airport.

“The red zone people will be required to quarantine. As you know today, if you come from South Africa, you will have to spend quarantined two weeks outside of the country and then two weeks inside the country.

“There are many examples like that.”

Array
(
    [post_type] => post
    [post_status] => publish
    [orderby] => date
    [order] => DESC
    [update_post_term_cache] => 
    [update_post_meta_cache] => 
    [cache_results] => 
    [category__in] => 1
    [posts_per_page] => 4
    [offset] => 0
    [no_found_rows] => 1
    [date_query] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [after] => Array
                        (
                            [year] => 2023
                            [month] => 12
                            [day] => 19
                        )

                    [inclusive] => 1
                )

        )

)